Simon Mkina relunctantly considers himself a bit of an online pioneer.

The journalist from the East African nation of Tanzania has a blog. That may not be a big deal here. But in Tanzania, where blogging is just starting to catch on, Mkina is a rarity.

"I'm a pioneer in the blogging cycle of Tanzania," Mkina said yesterday during a visit to the Star-Ledger newsroom in Newark.

Mkina is part of a group of Tanzanian journalists spending six weeks in the U.S. in a program run by the University of Maine. He came to New Jersey this week to get a taste of how U.S. journalists are using blogs.

He estimates there are about 50 Tanzanian journalists experimenting with blogging in English and their native Swahili. Students at the nation's universities have also begun to set up their own personal blogs. Recently, one of the nation's opposition political parties started a political blog, Mkina said.

But in Tanzania, where internet access is limited among the working class, the community of bloggers and blog readers remain small. Outside of the large cities, computers are rare. Mkina, who lives in the capital city of Dar es Salaam, said he recently visited his mother's village and people gathered to look at his laptop, asking if it was a television.

Mkina is an editor and political columnist at the KuliKoni, a daily newspaper in Tanzania, and its English-language counterpart, ThisDay. He says he spends much of his time writing about political corruption, human rights, abuse of power and education.

He began blogging in 2004 when a friend who traveled to the U.S. told him about the new medium.